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Connect First
Call Center Software
Software Provider Checklist
Ask the right questions to vet your next software.

2. 4
Uptime
When you’re relying on a business to run, it has the biggest impact
on your ROI. Uptime comes down to overall business performance
based upon the cost of downtime. Cost of downtime can run
between thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Can you provide your uptime for the last 6 months?
What is your average global uptime?
Scalability
You need the ability to build in a single tenant or multiple tenants to
the size needed to ensure software usability without performance
impact.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What type of architecture is the platform based upon?
Does the software have capacity limits?
Can we scale up and down without having to interact or reach
out?
Redundancy
You need multi-location infrastructure (separate regional
locations), automatic failovers that aren’t dependent upon
physical changes to hardware and automated monitoring to
ensure the provider’s technical resources are instantly notified
when there are impacts to performance.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What type of failover system do you have in place?
Is manual work available in case of emergency?
Are there regionally located redundancies?
How often are failover systems tested?
What are testing mechanisms for disaster recovery?
(In other words, are failovers forced on individual
modules or environments to test automations?)
SLA
Many tech companies don’t give you SLAs around impact or cost to
business, but give SLAs on percentage of licensing. This can hide overall
quality of agreement.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What is your SLA?
What is your compensation for below SLA performance?
What is your SLA compensation based upon? (i.e. licensing?
Invoice?)
Pricing
When choosing a software provider, evaluate several
options to establish a pricing baseline. To find the best
technology that fits within your budget and toolset
requirements, learn the industry’s value system in
determining price to understand what you are paying
for. A lot of companies don’t know to give proper
valuation to a cost.
What should you be asking?

3. 5
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What does your pricing include?
Implementation
Integrations
Development
Training
Support
Unlimited support
Is there undocumented pricing on storage?
Are there product feature sets not included in the base price?
In the call center space, are there per port costs?
Pricing Flexibility
You might see really common pricing structures
across an industry. Some companies need to use
a product more seasonally or in response to
unforeseen events. Determine if there is flexibility
for you to modify the pricing structure and
whether the existing pricing works for your
business.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Are there multiple pricing models?
Do you monitor usage to align with forecasted
usage?
Contractual flexibility
Most software companies (within SaaS and cloud based modelling) are valuated based upon
term to contract. Learn the extent to which you are bound to the contract.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Is there a standard annual termination for convenience clause?
What are the terms and costs associated with early termination?
Data
You want a place to maintain records securely for
an extended length of time. Be aware of what is
happening with your data, your access and any
compliance considerations.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What is the process to access my
data?
Who is the accountable system of
record?
Do you have clauses in the terms and
conditions to account for who is the
system of record?
Is there anything in your disaster
recovery plan to ensure data loss
doesn’t happen?
Do you store snap shots in case of user error to recover lost data?
If we change providers or terminate the contract, do you have a process in place to
easily attain all your data?

4. 6
Security
Evaluate the specific security you need for your data and
recognize the cost needed to maintain security. The company
needs to have solid security policies, backup policies and
clearly define their policies in their contract to move forward.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Is there live monitoring?
How long do security patches take to deploy?
Support
Support isn’t the sexiest thing to advertise and can be misconstrued,
but it’s also a hugely underrated criteria for choosing your next provider.
You don’t want to be arguing with someone in their second or third
language, only to find out the person can have no immediate impact
on your issue. While all companies proclaim how much they care, it’s the
quality of what happens after the deal is closed that you should be hone
in on.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Where is the support located?
When is support available?
Is there a dedicated representative to handle calls?
How much support do I receive?
What type of support is not included in our contract price?
What is the average first response time?
What type of troubleshooting information do you offer and where is it stored?
Development
A fraction of a company’s development should be comfortably
accepted offsite as long as the management was handled by
an in-house person. You don’t want to sign on with a company
who outsources a bulk of their work and has to make extensive
calls in order to start handling your issue. Learn a company’s
development practices to discover how aptly they will support
your impending needs.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
When code is outsourced, how do you control for
quality?
What are the development QA guidelines?
Are there alpha, beta and control change
processes?
Is the QA team in-house?
Implementation
The implementation process can get a little wonky if the company doesn’t have streamlined
processes in place. You should expect your implementation process to be timely and the range of
work accounted for.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Do you track your timeline accuracy?
(If yes) How close are you to the scoped timeline?
What happens in the event of scope creep?

5. 7
APIs
APIs are a big part of your success. It’s important to know you
have the documentation you need to accomplish your goals. You
don’t want to get stuck in something with realized misperceptions.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Do you provide an open API?
What are your limitations around APIs?
What does your API documentation look like?
Can I get access to bring in my own resources?
Are you willing to partner with my development group
to ensure well-implemented integrations?
Integrations
When looking for a new software provider, you need to
determine if it needs to be integrated into your existing
software landscape. Make sure to outline every aspect of the
integrations you need and allocate the necessary resources on
the front end for timeliness and scope alignment.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Is there an engineer who handles integrations?
Can you integrate with my current software?
Will you work with me to develop an integration to fit
my needs?
Operations
Ask questions about implementation cycles and the standard
implementation walkthrough. If there’s any complexity, there should
be a good map or model for standard operating procedures. The
provider should be doing good discovery and if they’re not doing the
discovery on the front end, they probably won’t once they close the
deal.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What are your operational processes for implementation?
What are your operational processes for transition from
implementation to support?
What is your customer retention rate?
Compliance (contact center specific)
In the contact center world, you can find software to technically handle compliance issues. Learn
what the provider’s limitations and strengths are around protecting your business.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Do you incorporate the following solutions?
TCPA
Am I provided with the tools to maintain my own compliance?
PCI
Am I provided with the tools to maintain my own compliance?
To what level are you certified?
HIPPA
Am I provided with the tools to maintain my own compliance?

6. 8
As you begin to probe into a
companies’ true practices,
you will be able to differentiate
a company’s marketing from
their priorities. Not every
software will have everything
you want, but it’s important
to look at a company against
the whole industry landscape
to see how well they do in
fact accommodate customer
needs versus the other way
around.
Bottom line, amazing support
is never underrated. And
there are those diamond in
the rough companies that
revolutionize an industry by
making what they do all about
the customer.
About Connect First
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Conclusion